This is William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Sinhala, translated by Bandula Vithanage. The text is entirely in Sinhala — there is no parallel English text — so it will be of use to readers who read the language, to students of drama in Sri Lanka, and to anyone collecting Sinhala translations of the Shakespearean canon.
Bandula Vithanage was a Sri Lankan actor, director, dramatist and translator, credited with bringing Shakespearean theatre to the Sri Lankan stage. He staged his Veniciye Velenda as a production co-produced with Tony Ranasinghe, and he also translated Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet into Sinhala. His work on this play therefore comes out of the theatre rather than the study: the translator was a man who had to make the lines speak aloud to a Sinhala-speaking audience.
The play itself needs little introduction. Bassanio, short of money and in love with the heiress Portia, turns to his friend Antonio, the merchant of the title. Antonio's capital is tied up at sea, so he borrows from the moneylender Shylock, who sets as his security a pound of Antonio's flesh. When Antonio's ships fail to return, the bond falls due, and the matter goes to court — where Portia, disguised as a young lawyer, argues the case. It is a play about money, contracts, mercy and prejudice, and the Shylock of the trial scene remains one of the most argued-over figures Shakespeare wrote.
The National Library of Sri Lanka catalogues the work under Shakespeare as author with Vithanage named as translator, published in Colombo by Godage, under the subject heading English drama. Godage is an established Colombo publishing house issuing titles in Sinhala and English.
For buyers outside Sri Lanka: this is a Sinhala-language edition and assumes a reader fluent in Sinhala. If you want the English text of the play, this is not that book. If you are interested in how Shakespeare has been carried into Sinhala for the stage, or you are building a shelf of Vithanage's translations alongside his Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet, this belongs there.
- Author: Bandula Vithanage
- Publisher: Godage International Publishers
- Published: 2019
- Language: Sinhala
- Pages: 128
- ISBN: 9789553015051
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